Wednesday, June 9, 2010

So, I'm reading a blog post by Seth Godin and it's about deadlines. Do architects have a lot of deadlines? You betcha. I'm still in awe of how many architects think that they can meet their deadlines by drawing using the CAD process.

If only they weren't so stubborn and resistant to changing the process. Oh well, you've heard that story a million times.

As I'm reading the post, and probably only Randy will appreciate this, the words are hitting my brain and I'm saying the word out load inside my head.

Say it out loud..."Deadlines". Now say it slowly...."D e a d l i n e s". Now say it really slowly and split up the syllables. Now what do you have...."Dead Lines".

Yup, you got it. Dead lines, as in no intelligence, no information, no usable function to anyone downstream in your workflow and process, and there you have it. CAD is nothing more than dead lines. No wonder you can never meet your deadlines, because you're working with dead lines.

Why has no one figured this out before? Keep using the CAD process and your business is dead and the bottom lines will be zero. Well, enough about that. I need to do some more prep work for the AIA National show tomorrow. Oh my gosh. The entire convention center is filled with booths from every manufacturer. I love the fact that even Archicad bothered to show up. It's probably the last time too. I love being right next to the Google booth. My wife told me to go up to them tomorrow and start asking them random questions....as in using them to Google stuff. I thought that was pretty funny, so I'll definitely try it.I did have a long talk with two Google Sketchup programmers today. They had some great looking drawings and we were debating just how and where their product would fit into the construction process.

One really cool thing I learned about Sketchup today is that the free version is illegal to use for commercial use. Yes, all of you architects using the free version to make models are violating the license agreement and breaking the law. You can't even export dwgs from the free version anyhow, so why bother using it. Read http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html and you can read the actual agreement. I wonder what the penalities are for violating the EULA and using software illegally for commercial use. Where was I...oh yeah..deadlines...I have to go now. I have work to do for tomorrow's big show and have to go meet my deadlines and my dead line users.